AT&T would totally bring gigabit to Austin, provided it gets same deal as Google

AT&T wants the same "rights of way, permitting, state licenses" and the like.

On the same day that Google announced it is launching Google Fiber in the Texas capital, AT&T said it would be more than happy to do the same—that is, assuming that the telco giant is “granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.”

"Most encouraging is the recognition by government officials that policies which eliminate unnecessary regulation, lower costs and speed infrastructure deployment, can be a meaningful catalyst to additional investment in advanced networks which drives employment and economic growth," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, in a statement.

On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon roughly an hour after AT&T's press release, both Google and the City of Austin were quick to point out that Google had not received any “economic incentives” from the city.

“We haven't offered any economic incentives,” Lee Leffingwell, the city’s mayor, told reporters on the call. “It's strictly an agreement to expedite the process. That would be applicable to others. We have to look at [AT&T’s] operation and look at their application.”

The general manager for Google Access (of which Fiber is a part), Kevin Lo, echoed this sentiment.

“Like in [Kansas City], there are no special incentives,” he said on the call. “We believe it’s great when there's more user choice. We welcome AT&T's announcement. I think it's great that people want a [gigabit connection].”

However, while there may not have been economic incentives in the purest and most narrow definition of the term, if Kansas City, MO is any indicator, the city certainly pulled out all the stops for Google.

As we reported last year, the agreement (PDF) between Google and the City of Fountains specifies that the city will "make space available to Google in City facilities for the installation of Google’s Central Office equipment and for additional network facilities," will "provide power necessary for Google’s equipment at City locations," and "will not charge Google for such space, power, or related services."

For now, neither Google nor the City of Austin has published a copy of the official agreement between the two entities, although a Google spokesperson told Ars that it would be posted on the city’s website.

“Both Google and the Austin government worked hard to make sure that our agreement is fair, non-exclusive and transparent,” the spokesperson said. “The agreements address the same basic items, but since Austin and Kansas City are different cities, with different infrastructure and processes, the details differ.”

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

192 Reader Comments

I think most telco's would build out high speed networks if they are allowed to cherry pick where to do so in a city, such as google has done. They know where the subscribers live who'd actually pay for services. But cities impose a lot of hurdles to the average telco in exchange for right of way. Enough to make investing big chunks of money in infrastructure not worth it.

I think most telco's would build out high speed networks if they are allowed to cherry pick where to do so in a city, such as google has done. They know where the subscribers live who'd actually pay for services. But cities impose a lot of hurdles to the average telco in exchange for right of way. Enough to make investing big chunks of money in infrastructure not worth it.

Actually, I think it might have more to do with the regulation AT&T is under which does not apply to Google.

I know it's fun to trash AT&T but I have to just make a comment about how their customer service is some of the best I've ever dealt with. I called up just this past weekend and basically said "Look, Comcast is really trying to get us to switch and offering us this deal. We are really looking to save some money. What can you do for us?" The lady was very pleasant and transferred me over to a "specialist" who was authorized to make retention deals. After explaining the situation again, and without any arguing or bickering, she (the "specialist") dropped our bill by $30 a month and upgraded both our TV package and internet speed (we have U-verse) at the same time for 12 months.

What the AT&T spokesperson didn't mention is that AT&T's Lightning Gigabit U-Verse Internet would cost $999.95 per month before fees and would come with a 75GB/month data cap. You'd also have to rent ten separate pieces of equipment at $10 each and pay a non-refundable $500 installation fee. Also, in order to save on roll-out costs, the head-end would be connected by only a single 100Mbps backhaul link.

This is exactly the kind of response to Google Fiber I was hoping for. Other Broadband providers fearing that they would lose their entire customer base to Google since they couldn't provide similar speeds would take up the cause to start putting fiber to more places to allow for Gigabit connections to their users.

Hopefully more providers take this philosophy and Gigabit connections start making it to everyone. (I'm sure I'll never see it though...)

Ah, but would AT&T feel a need to implement a bandwidth cap on their fiber, like the rest of their services?

I heard something awhile ago about a 250 GB cap on U-verse but I still haven't seen this policy officially in any of the U-verse terms of service. There's also no "meter" on their site for tracking data usage so I don't think these caps, if they do exist for AT&T, are actually currently enforced.

I think most telco's would build out high speed networks if they are allowed to cherry pick where to do so in a city, such as google has done. They know where the subscribers live who'd actually pay for services. But cities impose a lot of hurdles to the average telco in exchange for right of way. Enough to make investing big chunks of money in infrastructure not worth it.

Horseshit!!

If that were true anyone of the 4 (or is it 5) major ISP's that control the internet in the US could of done the exact same thing as Google did at any point in time. Now all of sudden they are whining about how they could of done this? You know what they are a bunch of fat cat hypocrites that did the bare minimum to maintain their monopolistic grip.

All Google is doing is exposing how poorly our ISP's have screwed the US.

"Most encouraging is the recognition by government officials that policies which eliminate unnecessary regulation, lower costs and speed infrastructure deployment, can be a meaningful catalyst to additional investment in advanced networks which drives employment and economic growth," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO.

What a load of crap! Deregulation and corporate handouts do not encourage them create more jobs. They never create more employment opportunities when given such benefits, they just pocket the profits. The only way to make more jobs is if the consumer demand is so high that they have no choice but to hire more people. That means the lower to middle classes need to have a larger share of the wealth. When people have money, they but more goods. When more people buy more goods, companies need more staff to handle the increased demand. This deregulation crap is just more of the supply side economics bullshit they touted during the great depression. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.

the agreement (PDF) between Google and the City of Fountains specifies that the city will "make space available to Google in City facilities for the installation of Google’s Central Office equipment and for additional network facilities," will "provide power necessary for Google’s equipment at City locations," and "will not charge Google for such space, power, or related services."

Google is also going to be providing free connections to a lot of government facilities. One could say that the the space and power they are receiving is just compensation for the service they are providing.

So in Kansas City, Google has no running costs at all. I would consider that to be a major economic incentive. And if what Austin and Google have said is true about Austin giving them the same agreement as Kansas City, then they do have considerable economic incentives there as well. I don't understand why there would be an attempt to hide it.

I wonder if Google would be so generous if the considerable running costs of rent and power, at the least, were to be added at a normal commercial rate.

"We're really effin' pissed that Google is outclassing us in our own backyard. So, we're going to accuse them of getting government subsidies to do this; even though they haven't, and even though we've received billions in government incentives to do the same thing but used it to fund my golf habit instead," thought Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, while he was issuing his statement.

I know it's fun to trash AT&T but I have to just make a comment about how their customer service is some of the best I've ever dealt with. I called up just this past weekend and basically said "Look, Comcast is really trying to get us to switch and offering us this deal. We are really looking to save some money. What can you do for us?" The lady was very pleasant and transferred me over to a "specialist" who was authorized to make retention deals. After explaining the situation again, and without any arguing or bickering, she (the "specialist") dropped our bill by $30 a month and upgraded both our TV package and internet speed (we have U-verse) at the same time for 12 months!

So loyal customers don't get a fair deal unless they call, speak to a special "please don't leave even though we treat you like shit" department and threaten to leave, then they get a bill lowered to only 2-3x what the rest of the world pays.

And that's "some of the best (customer service) I've ever dealt with" ?

If AT&T genuinely wanted to install fiber on the same basic deal Google did in Kansas City and now plans to do in Austin there are a great many cities glad to have it. There would be no need for posturing or whining, just make the offer, do the deal and send out the crews.

AT&T can afford to promise a lot in the specific places where Google has committed money. It is about limiting competition everywhere else.

If AT&T was willing to provide gigabit if they got a reasonable deal, what was stopping them from requesting the deal in the first place, before Google felt it worth stepping in? If they'd shown such willingness to work towards providing that level of service, maybe they'd have taken away any incentive for Google to enter the arena.

Why bother, AT&T? Austin already has an exclusive fibre "monopoly" courtesy of Google, same way as you have a real monopoly elsewhere. Would you like to instead concentrate on offering competitively priced gigabit to other large US cities?

Obviously not, because you have to try to nip the competition in the bud, just like you've been doing it all along.

I think most telco's would build out high speed networks if they are allowed to cherry pick where to do so in a city, such as google has done. They know where the subscribers live who'd actually pay for services. But cities impose a lot of hurdles to the average telco in exchange for right of way. Enough to make investing big chunks of money in infrastructure not worth it.

Governments do this because utilities are an important part of society. Could you imagine Manhattan with electricity on demand from multiple companies, but harlem or queens with barely any? Why? Because the money wouldn't be there. First it was clean water, then electricity, then phone, then cable, now internet (throw roads in there somewhere as well). It benefits all society when these things are available to anyone. If we relied solely on the free market, you'd end up with systems that would be infinitely complex and incompatible, along with swaths of area that are simply "economically unfeasible" because the market would price them right out of reach of many people. More services are moving online and it would benefit everyone as a whole if they were able to access those services.

Without public services and utilities, you'd still be riding to Butte, Montana on horseback .

Actually, I think it might have more to do with the regulation AT&T is under which does not apply to Google.

That's not really true. Most large companies telco's create separate corporate entities for their broadband services specifically to avoid regulation. This releases them for most federal and local regulation insofar as it relates to being the ILEC.

I would also point out that only a small portion of the right of ways deal with government. Most of the right of ways involve leasing rights from another utility (most of the time it's the power company, sometimes it's cable or telco).

AT&T's biggest problem is that they are AT&T. When they do a build out there's going to be an ton of bureaucracy and people involved in planing, procurement and execution

If Austin is giving google access to it's facilities to implement the fiber optic, it is because they don't have other options to offer. They can't force incumbents such as AT&T to offer reasonable access at reasonable costs to their equipment whether it is a cabinet in an easements or a pole. If AT&T wants fair competition, lets implement mandatory line-sharing again.

Interesting. Some years ago, as early as 2003, Grande Communications wanted to bring fiber throughout Austin neighborhoods, but they couldn't get through all the political objections to new cables and new boxes. Grande was at the ready, and I'll tell you I'd have been subscriber number one. It ended up dead on the pole, as it were.

But now that it's big names like Google and AT&T, suddenly it's all worth Austin's time to "expedite" things, and the city is entertaining all comers equally. Huh. I suppose this is another case in which some are more equal than others.

If AT&T was willing to provide gigabit if they got a reasonable deal, what was stopping them from requesting the deal in the first place, before Google felt it worth stepping in? If they'd shown such willingness to work towards providing that level of service, maybe they'd have taken away any incentive for Google to enter the arena.

Because Google forced their hand. AT&T would have NEVER offered this had Google not kicked them in their asses.

AT&T: "Really, with city incentives like this we could install gigabit fiber in any city in the nation...but for some reason we only seem interested in doing so where Google is about to eat all our subscribers."

I bet any number of other cities would love to give AT&T the same "incentives" that Google has in Austin, if they'd build an equal-quality network. Somehow I don't see this happening.